With gloves off and flags raised, it seems that in the hunting world, organizations all across North America have all agreed that hunter recruitment and retention is one of the foremost issues that face us today.
Jammer and I also continue to be advocates, both of us with kids at home and with my dad and his hunting buddies now in their sixties, keeping them in the field and enjoying the outdoors has become a huge priority for me. But lets face it, one phone call to dad has him on the doorstep before the sun comes up and my kids, well ,during hunting season they practically sleep in the truck waiting to go. Dad’s been a hunter his whole life and that’s carried down to me and now my kids are eagerly following in our footsteps and I couldn’t be any prouder. The point I’m trying to make is that when we talk about hunter recruitment, we need to look outside of the active hunting community. My kids are going to hunt anyway, and so are yours. So where are we going to find our next generation of hunters to carry on our traditions?
Take a kid outdoors, not your kid, someone else’s. Generally it’s a good idea to run it by their parents first. Taking a kid out on a hike and showing him some of the wonders in the outdoors is usually accepted with a big thank you by the parents. Returning that same kid to his parents following a great afternoon of shooting targets (dead or alive) might not be accepted so warmly.
Some of the archery programs out there are another way of introducing kids to the shooting sports. Putting archery back in the schools down in the States has seemed to go over very well. I know where we live the archery club sponsors a youth night that has become very popular.
In the U.S. there seems to also be another huge trend in hunting.
Let me jump back a bit here and discuss why there seems to be such a push for recruitment and retention. You guys will have to bear with me here, I’m no mathematical genius by any means so if I miss a million people here and there, you’ll have to forgive me.
In Canada we have roughly 33.2 million people and about 1.2 million of these people by hunting licenses. That means that about 3.6% of our population is out hunting. Seems reasonable, right? The alarming number is when you look at some of the trends. I’ll just use B.C. as an example. In 1980 there were approximately 150,000 resident hunting licenses sold, but by 2001, resident license sales fell off by almost half to 80,000. Where is everybody? That’s a topic for another day.
Now looking into the numbers in th U.S. is a little easier, information is found a lot more readily, most likely because they actually spend money on researching wildlife and management plans.
In 1980 there were about 226 million people living in the States, now you can find a couple of different totals representing the number of hunters but we’ll use 16.2 million hunters for a total of 7.1% of the population afield. Now last year in 2008, with a total population around 306 million, there were roughly 20.6 million hunters equalling 6.7% of the population out there hunting.
Now I start thinking, where’s the problem? The numbers seem to add up, over 18yrs the percentage of hunters in the field has dropped by only less than half of one percent. Delving a little deeper into the demographics in the States, I found a wonderful but surprising trend.
Women.
The United States has about a .97 male/female ratio and it seems that more and more of the 153 million American women are picking up the weapon of their choice and going afield. In fact, the number of women hunting has increased from 800,000 five years ago to 3.2 million women hunters today. That’s 16% of all hunters and nearly 1% of the entire population. If this trend continues, in five more years there could be 5.6 million women hunting, for an amazing 27% of all hunters being made up of women.
I’ve been looking into a couple of women’s hunting organizations and it’s amazing. I was aware of one such group in Texas, we ran into some of their members at a trade show down there. What started out as the Texas Women’s Shooting Sports has now turned into an amazing worldwide organization with 6 million members. These women are the real deal, check them out at www.txdiva.com, and also take a look at www.womenhunters.org. Keep up the good work ladies.
So guys, next time you’re looking for someone to take into the outdoors, take your, wife/girlfriend, daughter, someone else’s girlfriend, whatever, just get the ladies out there and get them involved.
Shawn W. “Antler Outdoors”.
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I'm Cory Jmaeff (Jammer), I began hunting as soon as I could walk. Spending countless hours in the footsteps of accomplished hunters in my family. I would love to thank my beautiful wife and 2 kids for allowing me to spend as much time outdoors as I do!
Shawn Wudrich brings a lifetime of hunting and ten years of guiding and outfitting experience to Antler Outdoors. With a passion for hunting the mountains and having had the experience of hunting all over North America, Shawn's personality and knowledge of hunting shines through on camera.
